In September 1999, Matthew Duch wrote his estranged wife two messages. One on a sheet of paper placed on a bed in the Emmaus house they rented asked Elizabeth Duch to think of him when she heard the Ricky Martin song, "She's All I Ever Had." "I love you very much," Duch wrote. The second message was scrawled on a wall in the 554 Chestnut St. house. It was written in the blood of one of their daughters. It said, "See U in Hell." Lehigh County prosecutors allege that Duch wrote the last message after he had slashed the throat of his mother-in-law in the house and had cut the necks of the couple's two daughters.

A Palmerton man who was charged with sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl was acquitted recently by a Lehigh County jury. The jury last month found Thomas G. Szalku, 40, of 472 Columbia Ave., not guilty of 12 counts of aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault, indecent exposure and corruption of a minor. The alleged victim said that Szalku, who knew her family, told her to take her clothes off when they were alone in his house in 1997. The girl alleged that Szalku undressed and told her not to tell anyone.

A former Allentown resident who recently moved to Arizona was identified by police Wednesday as a suspect in a botched June 16 burglary attempt in Tucson that led to his suicide. Quentin S. Devine, 34, whose last two known addresses were in Allentown, and an accomplice, Alice Jeffrey, allegedly broke into a Tucson residence last week and held four people hostage, Tucson police said. According to the police report, Devine and Jeffrey knocked on the door of the home of four University of Arizona students, claimed they were police and forced their way into the house at gunpoint.

ALLENTOWN, LEHIGH COUNTY Reward offered: Two dogs who were clubbed to death and left in Lower Milford Township more than a week ago had run off from their Milford Township home. Owner Cathy Galt learned of their fate when she read about the deaths in the newspaper. For Galt and her husband, three children and four grandchildren, there has been a death in the family. For police, a cruel and potentially dangerous person needs to be apprehended. A reward is being offered for a conviction.

A 32-year-old Hilltown Township woman died in a house fire Friday morning in what police are calling an apparent suicide. Neighbors described her as a "wonderful person." "She was a great person, a happy person," said Kim Parker, who lived next to Stephanie Nichols in the Green Meadows development in Hilltown Township. "She was the kind of neighbor who'd do anything for you." Parker and other neighbors in the development on Reliance Place said they were stunned to learn of Nichols' death.

Weatherly police, volunteer firefighters and a district justice rushed into a burning ranch house in May and pulled an unconscious woman from the flames and smoke. Not only did they save her from the fire, they apparently saved her from herself. It turns out Jacqueline Wanamaker set her home on fire to kill herself, officials say. After arguing with her husband, and becoming despondent over placing her uncle in a nursing home, Wanamaker, 43, used the uncle's belongings, including his living will, to set her home ablaze.

Jurors immediately were told the picture was disturbing: A prominent physician clubbed his former psychiatry partner on the head with a crowbar before trying to take his own life, the prosecutor said. Dr. James Taylor's career and professional relationship with Dr. Martha Turnberg once were part of a beautiful mosaic. A Bible-quoting physician, Taylor was head of the psychiatric ward at Pocono Medical Center and ran a thriving private practice that employed Turnberg, a former nun. His salary was in six figures -- seven by some accounts.

Last year, Joan Creager sent a questionnaire to all 253 Pennsylvania legislators asking if they favored legalizing physician-assisted suicide. Only eight replied. And of those, only three said they supported the idea. Court challenges to state laws prohibiting physician-assisted have been filed in at least three states, and voters in a fourth, Oregon, have passed a referendum legalizing the practice. But in Pennsylvania, said Creager, the issue isn't even on the political radar screen.

Dr. James Taylor liked to quote the Bible, but told police he failed to help a fallen fellow doctor because he wanted to "let the bitch die." He personally opposed the death penalty, but testified that a Pennsylvania death row inmate was competent to be executed. He spent more than $10,000 on dental work for a Russian teen-ager he barely knew, but tried to have an old friend involuntarily committed to a hospital psychiatric unit. So went the often contradictory life of Taylor, a prominent Monroe County psychiatrist and neurosurgeon who lay near death yesterday after a week that police say began with his clubbing a colleague over the head with a crowbar.

An Easton man apparently set himself on fire last night as he sat in his car in a West Ward neighborhood, but was saved by two passers-by who tackled him and smothered the flames. As a panicked and flame-covered Rafael Irizarry, 36, of 302 N. 11th St., staggered around Spring Garden Street just a few feet away from a park where children were playing, two neighbors chased him and pulled him to the ground and applied towels and blankets. Irizarry was listed in critical condition at Lehigh Valley Hospital, Salisbury Township.